Extensive consultation with hospital staff and residents shaped the Canberra Hospital Expansion, a nine-storey structure that marks Australia’s inaugural fully operational electric hospital.

An ambitious stride towards a more compassionate and environmentally conscious healthcare environment, the Canberra Hospital Expansion was conceived by BVN. Over 1200 hours of consultation with hospital staff and residents have shaped this expansive nine-storey structure, which houses critical care services tailored to the needs of patients, carers and staff alike.

The project is described, in a word, as “iterative” by Julian Ashton, Principal of BVN, who explains that the extensive hours of community consultation “truly informed the design.” As the design was multi-level, individual stakeholder and specific community groups helped guide vacillating perspectives. “You have to hear about all the clinical needs on one level and, at another, hear directly from people responding to observations they had about the existing campus — the things they’d like to see the project be able to do and things they would like to see incorporated, without the filter of others coming along saying, ‘you can’t do that,'” adds Ashton. “The client did a lot of work ensuring there was great representation from a whole lot of diverse community groups that came together as one.”

At its core, the new Critical Services Building — Building 5 — welcomes visitors with an ebullient reception area that serves both as a main entry point and a community hub. The design eschews conventional hospital aesthetics, opting instead for an open and modern space that prioritises comfort and connection. Features such as colour-coded wayfinding enhance navigation, while thoughtfully positioned seating nooks beside expansive windows offer serene views of the surrounding mountain ranges and invite moments of tranquility amid the hustle of hospital life.

The patient-centric ethos manifests in a multitude of innovative spaces. “Inevitably, looking at a physical example rather than a virtual representation or drawing shows you so much more. People are truly able to engage in the context of particular decisions,” explains Ashton. An Intensive Care Unit equipped with outdoor terraces allows patients to experience the healing power of nature while receiving critical care. Every ward is punctuated with sunlit seating areas and adaptable lounges that foster a sense of community among families and friends.

Unique to Canberra Hospital is the Family Respite Lounge, specifically developed through community insights, providing essential facilities such as shower areas, resting pods and private meeting rooms for families navigating the complexities of sudden admissions.

Sustainability too lies at the heart of this architectural endeavour. “It is a response to designing in a carbon-neutral world,” says Ashton. “Canberra is fortunate that it has a large degree of solar in particular, which provides the input to power the hospital.” As Australia’s first fully operational electric hospital, the building is powered entirely by renewable energy, significantly reducing its carbon footprint by an estimated 1886 tonnes annually.

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Ashton continues: “The hospital itself has a large consumption of energy, so to be able to utilise the available energy with how we would power the project itself meant two worlds came together.” The design incorporates regenerative principles, including waste management stations and passive solar strategies, which collectively contribute to a healthier environment for both patients and the community.

“We certainly looked holistically at how to make the building as efficient as it possibly could be, and that was looking at the external influence on the façade design, minimising heating and cooling costs and what those would be,” notes Ashton. “A lot of work was applied to modelling the envelope of the building — how to best locate the sunshades, and indeed the varying shape and form of those, and to construct the envelope in such a way that it minimised heat loss or gain through the façade itself.” The waste streaming initiatives considered material selections and construction techniques for minimising construction waste, namely using prefabricated systems wherever possible to maximise offsite manufacture so the components could be brought to the site, minimising waste from on-site cutting.

The public spaces within the hospital are further enriched by site-specific artworks curated by Creative Road. “I think, fundamentally, it was a key component in the original design, considering how the public art could be incorporated into the project,” Ashton concludes. “As the project developed, it became more of a key focus for us, the community and the hospital — what are the elements in the project that could celebrate public art, which goes a long way into transforming it from a hospital into a public place and considering the methods of contributions the community could make to enhance those spaces.”

Local artists have crafted pieces that celebrate Canberra’s culture and landscape, while Indigenous artists honour First Nations heritage through their expansive works. Lynnice Church’s ‘Journey of Healing,’ featuring 24,073 shimmering metal discs, serves as a striking welcome to the new entry, symbolising the interconnected roles of family, visitors and healthcare professionals in the healing journey.

BVN
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